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Tradition is laziness.

Gustav Mahler

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Gustav Mahler
Age: 50 †
Born: 1860
Born: July 7
Died: 1911
Died: May 18
Classical Composer
Composer
Conductor
Musician
Mahler
Laziness
Tradition

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Only when I experience do I compose - only when I compose do I experience.
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In its beginnings, music was merely chamber music, meant to be listened to in a small space by a small audience.
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The real art of conducting consists in transitions.
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The longer you live and the more you learn, the more clearly you will feel the difference between the few men who are truly great and the mere virtuosi.
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I was a crazy young man who let himself be blinded by his passions and obeyed only the impulses of the moment.
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I also had a brother who was like me a musician and a composer. A man of great talent, far more gifted than I. He died very young... he killed himself in the prime of his life.
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There is a world of difference between a Mahler eighth note and a normal eighth note.
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To write a symphony is, for me, to construct a world.
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It is easier to achieve a desired result in short pieces.
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When I have reached a summit, I leave it with great reluctance, unless it is to reach for another, higher one.
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It should be one’s sole endeavor to see everything afresh and create it anew.
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I beg of you... never assume an inner or an outer pose, never a disguise.
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Beauty and fullness of tone can be achieved by having the whole orchestra play with high clarinets and a carefully selected number of piccolos.
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It's not just a question of conquering a summit previously unknown, but of tracing, step by step, a new pathway to it.
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I am thrice homeless, as a native of Bohemia in Austria, as an Austrian among Germans, and as a Jew throughout the world. Everywhere an intruder, never welcomed.
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The further the music develops, the more complex the apparatus used by the composer to express his thoughts becomes.
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But it's peculiar, as soon as I am in the midst of nature and by myself, everything that is base and trivial vanishes without trace. On such days nothing scares me and this helps me again and again.
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Fortunately, something always remains to be harvested. So let us not be idle.
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I don't let myself get carried away by my own ideas I abandon 19 out of 20 of them every day.
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Melodic invention is one of the surest signs of a divine gift.
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